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Our Thoughts

These are the thoughts we had as we proposed & implemented this project:

Girl Scout #1:
Before:
 We received an email from a woman at a nursing home who wanted us to plant a monarch waystation there. Another Silver Award group in our troop took them up on the offer. But this inspired the rest of our troop's Silver Award projects. This is the second monarch team. There’s also a bumblebee garden team.

     The monarch population has declined by 90% in the last 20 years. This is very concerning. Monarchs are essential pollinators. Without them, less crops would grow. This has the potential to slowly corrupt the ecosystem as we watch the populations of other pollinators decrease as well.                     

      I reached out to Riveredge and did some planning. I will do some research on monarch butterflies. The fact that they’re immune to the toxins of milkweed fascinates me. I want to know more about these creatures. All of us will help plant the garden. It’s not a one-person job. I’m also planning on doing a lot of the behind the scenes things like creating a website, creating a brochure, contacting people, and plan fundraising events

After:
I found myself seeking challenges as I contributed to solving a community problem:

1. I contacted the property owner and arranged for our group to plant 2. I wrote out text for our website 3. I planted some of the milkweed and nectar plants 4. I contacted our local library to see if they would pass out informational bookmarks about saving the monarchs. 5. I wrote the information on the bookmarks & decorated some of the bookmarks 6. I did a lot of research on monarchs 7. Cookie Sale to earn money for project

Girl Scout #2:
Before:
 One of my unique contributions to this project would be making painted rocks, they are part of the kindness rocks project, and we would put them into the garden for people to find. They would have sayings on them and on the back they would say pass it on. I'm also planning on helping make flyers and giving them to friends and family.
  My reason for selecting this project is that monarchs can help the ecosystem more than just being a pretty color, one thing that they can help with is killing and eating the weedy plants that invade a place. Also if they weren't around fewer crops would grow and all the pollinating would be left to the bees. 
Another reason for wanting to do this project is to inform the public about monarchs and how they help and grow the ecosystem, and how to help them.

After:
I helped with the cookie sale at the beginning of our project. I then spent several hours brainstorming with our team. I was in charge of decorating the kindness rocks, and also came up with the idea of a social media hashtag to help promote our project in years to come as the rocks are found and rehidden. I also planted milkweed and nectar plants at Riveredge nature center with my team. One of my individual roles in this project was making rocks that had information about the butterfly garden and handing them out to people. We hid them around the place where we had our butterfly garden, and I gave them out at a girl scout camp that I volunteer at. I also helped with planting and planning the butterfly garden. I feel most successful about our publication on this project and that we got our project and butterfly garden in the public eye. Some of the leadership skills that were put into this project was sharing this with the girls that went to the camp that we shared our project with. We also shared this with all of the other girls in our troop. We came together as a team when we were planning and we put everyone's ideas into our project, to make it happen. 
Girl Scout #3:
Before:
One of my contributions is rock painting. Rock painting can help people know which flowers are which. The rocks could also have little motivational quotes on them.
Why do I want to do this project? Growing up, butterflies were always my favorite insect. By doing this project, I’d be helping the insect that put wonder in my eyes as a child.
After: I developed positive values, maintained healthy relationships, & contributed to solving a community problem. To participate in this project I watered and kept the plants alive, I helped plant and I also made bookmarks to spread awareness to the community. I helped with the cookie sale as well, so that we could fund our project. This project was successful in all ways especially providing food and a place for caterpillars to become butterflies. As a group we did a great job communicating and planting the flowers.
 

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